{"id":184545,"date":"2021-05-29T19:04:38","date_gmt":"2021-05-29T19:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=117225"},"modified":"2021-05-29T19:04:38","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T19:04:38","slug":"media-hides-canadian-support-for-israeli-apartheid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/05\/29\/media-hides-canadian-support-for-israeli-apartheid\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Hides Canadian Support for Israeli Apartheid"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The dominant media permit only a narrow spectrum of opinion regarding Canadian foreign policy. Their refusal to report critical information about this country\u2019s foreign policy can be startling. Even journalists who uncover illuminating internal government files put the information down the memory hole.<\/p>\n

Recently Canadian Press journalist Lee Berthiaume reported on Canada\u2019s military mission in the occupied West Bank in \u201cCanadian troops<\/a>, Mounties get front row seats to Israeli-Palestinian clashes\u201d. The story reports that there are 23 Canadian troops and 3 RCMP members currently part of Operation Proteus, which trains Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces as part of a mission led by the Office of the United States Security Coordinator.<\/p>\n

Strangely, the puff piece ignored how Canadian military trainers and aid<\/a> have supported the creation of a Palestinian security force explicitly to enforce<\/a> Israel\u2019s occupation of the West Bank, a fact that Berthiaume previously reported.<\/p>\n

In a 2013 story Berthiaume quoted an internal 2012 note signed by then Canadian International Development Agency president Margaret Biggs that read: \u00a0\u201cThere have been<\/a> increasing references in the past months during high-level bilateral meetings with the Israelis about the importance and value they place on Canada\u2019s assistance to the Palestinian Authority, most notably in security\/justice reform.\u201d He further quotes Biggs stating, \u201cthe Israelis have noted the importance of Canada\u2019s contribution to the relative stability achieved through extensive security co-operation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.\u201d The heavily censored note suggests the goal of Canadian \u201caid\u201d was to protect a corrupt Mahmoud Abbas led PA, whose electoral mandate expired in 2009, from popular backlash. Biggs explained that \u201cthe emergence of popular protests on the Palestinian street against the Palestinian Authority is worrying and the Israelis have been imploring the international donor community to continue to support the Palestinian Authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

Surely this is important background information for a story about the recent work of Canadian troops and police in the West Bank.<\/p>\n

In my 2016 book A Propaganda System<\/em><\/a>: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and exploitation<\/em> I cite Berthiaume\u2019s 2013 revelation as an example of how critical information is reported on and then ignored. \u201cEven when dissidents\u2019 claims are proven by leading reporters through access to information requests,\u201d I wrote, \u201cthe result is often sent down the memory hole. Internal government documents unearthed by foreign policy journalist Lee Berthiaume about Canada\u2019s $300 million, five-year aid program to the Palestinians is a prime example\u2026. Berthiaume effectively confirmed that Canadian aid money was used to train a Palestinian security force to serve as an arm of Israel\u2019s occupation. While Berthiaume\u2019s article was reported in a number of Postmedia papers, there was no commentary in a major paper or follow-up stories about Biggs\u2019 internal note or Operation Proteus, Canada\u2019s effort to build a Palestinian security force under the US military\u2019s direction (with the exception of stories in small town papers covering individual police or soldiers leaving for the mission).\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time of writing this I was unaware of the depth of the suppression. Apparently, the information was so efficiently sent down the memory hole that the journalist who uncovered the internal documents won\u2019t even mention it when reporting on the subject!<\/p>\n

And this is not simply a matter of historical interest. Canada continues to plow significant resources into PA security forces. In 2019-20 the military allocated $5 million<\/a> to Operation Proteus and millions of dollars more in Canadian \u201caid\u201d supports Palestinian security forces. In 2018 the Trudeau government initiated the $1.25 million \u201cEmpowering<\/a> the Palestinian Security Sector\u201d and the $1.365 million \u201cSecurity<\/a> Sector Capacity Building in the West Bank\u201d projects. According to Global Affairs\u2019 description of the latter initiative, \u201cthese activities complement the ongoing institutional capacity-building efforts by Operation PROTEUS, Canada\u2019s contribution to the United States Security Coordinator.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recent research continues to demonstrate who this this \u201caid\u201d is designed to help.<\/p>\n

Drawing on previously classified materials, Carleton criminology professor Jeffrey Monaghan details Canada\u2019s role in turning Palestinian security forces in the West Bank into an effective arm of Israel\u2019s occupation. In Security Aid: Canada and the Development Regime of Security<\/em>, Monaghan describes a $1.5 million Canadian contribution to Joint Operating Centers whose \u201cmain focus \u2026 is to integrate elements of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces into Israeli command.\u201d He writes about Canada\u2019s \u201cmany funding initiatives to the PCP [Palestinian Civilian Police]\u201d which \u201chas increasingly been tasked by the Israeli Defence Forces as a lead agency to deal with public order policing, most recently during IDF bombings in Gaza and during Arab Spring demonstrations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a 2019 assessment of 80 donor reports from nine countries\/institutions titled \u201cDonor Perceptions<\/a> of Palestine: Limits to Aid Effectiveness,\u201d Jeremy Wildeman concludes that Canada, the US and International Monetary Fund employed the most anti-Palestinian language. \u201cCanada and the US,\u201d the academic writes, \u201cwere preoccupied with providing security for Israel from Palestinian violence, but not Palestinians from Israeli violence, effectively inverting the relationship of occupier and occupied.\u201d<\/p>\n

A great deal of Canada\u2019s supposed \u201cassistance\u201d to the Palestinians \u2014 who have less than one-twentieth their occupier\u2019s per capita GDP \u2014 is, in fact, explicitly designed to aid Israel. This is information Canadians need to know to judge what the government does with their taxes. But the dominant media largely ignores this and the other innumerable ways<\/a> Canada supports Israeli apartheid.<\/p>The post Media Hides Canadian Support for Israeli Apartheid<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dominant media permit only a narrow spectrum of opinion regarding Canadian foreign policy. Their refusal to report critical information about this country\u2019s foreign policy can be startling. Even journalists who uncover illuminating internal government files put the information down the memory hole. Recently Canadian Press journalist Lee Berthiaume reported on Canada\u2019s military mission in [\u2026]<\/p>\n

The post Media Hides Canadian Support for Israeli Apartheid<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,26880,221,26881,26882,165,26883,292,784,295],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184545"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184545"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184563,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184545\/revisions\/184563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}